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Dust Witch
History A mysterious character who stays near the desert area in a church-like structure in the dunes. Also know as the widow, including her file in the the drafting room. Associated with voodoo rituals, and holding a perpetual funeral in the desert. Spends most of her time alone, walking in the shadows on the top floor. She is a force for good who prays for those in trouble. Her role mirrors that of Mr Stanford and she watches over the cast of characters from outside the gates. She redeems characters and rescues them. She’s blind, but cannot face the sun. She occupies a dilapidated wooden chapel in the middle of the desert, containing rows of empty chairs and a candlelit shrine. A crucifix is adorned with a chain of paper roses. Takes Dwayne after his sand dance through the church into a room to be washed. She also anoints Miguel in the desert. Holds a 'service' in the little chapel followed by a 1:1 in a room (locked most of the time) near where Dwayne strips off/toilets. The Dust Witch appeared during the 2015 Sleep No More New Years' Eve party, her first appearance since the closure of The Drowned Man a year-and-a-half before. Appearance Veiled in head to toe in black lace. Loop - Basic - Claws sand of sand dune after Mary's murder (Desert) - Anoints Miguel (Desert) - Sits in scarecrow funeral as Faye heads to hoedown (Desert) - Light ritual in front of scarecrows (Desert) - Helps naked Dwayne (Desert) - Escorts Dwayne through scarecrow funeral (Desert) - Baths Dwayne (Church Bath Anteroom) - Retrieves Dwayne's clothes (Desert) - Performs book/sand ritual (Desert - Church) - 1-1 (Secret Room on Second Floor)* * 1:1 performed several times during loop POTENTIAL SPOILER: Details of Dust Witch 1-1 Loop - Extended She approaches Dwayne who’s dancing naked in the sand and she covers him with a cloth. She helps him up and takes him through the scarecrow shrine and downstairs. They walk through The Gatekeeper’s Office and out to the Woodchip Trailer Park. They enter a small chapel, where she bathes him in a side room. He slides into the murky water to wash away the sand and the sin. While he’s lying in the bath, she takes out a postcard and drops it on his chest. The card is from his father and she knows it will help Dwayne on his journey of redemption. The Dust Witch leaves Dwayne to recover and returns to the desert upstairs. She retrieves his discarded clothes from the sand, picking them up one by one and putting them in a cloth sack. She meets Miguel and anoints him. She smears ointments on his face and chest, and returns to her shack to wash her hands. She walks out into the desert and approaches an audience member, near the scarecrow congregation. She holds out her hand and leads him into a small dark room, locking the door. 1-1 (Secret Room on Second Floor) The space is bare with a single wooden bench against the wall, dimly lit by two anglepoise lamps. The shades of both lamps are pressed hard against the wall so only a faint halo is visible around the rim, like twin solar eclipses. She walks towards a bench, stumbling because of her blindness. She reaches out her hand and he helps her along. She sits him down on the bench and kneels in front him. Very slowly, she raises her veil to reveal her face. He’s expecting to see a wizened old crone, but instead sees a beautiful young girl with ringlets of black hair framing an expression of aching sadness. She talks quietly in a Spanish accent. She moves towards him and gently removes his mask. As she stares at him, the light grows dimmer until he’s sitting in darkness. Suddenly the light returns and her face is inches from his and he screams. She examines his hands and runs her own hands along his arm. She looks at him sorrowfully, holding out a blindfold that she raises and ties behind his head. She moves quietly and he can’t get a sense of where she is. She whispers, ‘There was a girl who hated the sun and dreamt of a world covered in shadow. So she prayed to the moon to take the light away, but the moon was a piece of rotten wood. So she prayed to the only one who could help her, to the Sandman.’ The Dust Witch takes the man’s hand and leads him into a larger space. He follows blindly and tentatively and can feel sand beneath his feet. They stop, and she raises his hands to head height to touch two posts either side of him. He can’t feel her any more, but she whispers, ‘The Sandman came to her to exact his price.’ She leads him further into the space and he feels sand being poured over his hands. He’s unsure how big the space is, but it feels vast. He’s being pulled faster and faster, then stopped and spun, before being pushed from behind. She barely holds him by the tip of his fingers and every now and then she lets go, so that he’s clasping nervously for her hands. They run and then he’s caught and slowed, spun and sent off again. It’s exhilarating and terrifying. Finally, she slows him to a halt. ‘The girl looked at the sun for the final time.’ There’s a light ahead of him, dimly visible through the blindfold. He hears the sound of thunder and the light grows brighter. The thunder reaches a crescendo and suddenly the light and noise cease. ‘In the darkness there is silence, there is nothing, only darkness, only breathing, only heartbeat.’ He’s grasping again, disoriented, and she’s near him, breathing slowly and deeply. She guides him forward until he feels the door in front of him. She puts his mask back on and pushes him out of the door, ‘You have to run. You must leave this place. Go! Run!’ He runs downstairs, terrified. The Dust Witch shambles across the dunes. She goes into her shack and performs a ritual with her belongings. Wandering around, she stumbles blindly over some boxes. She lies face down and motionless for several minutes, as the light all around gets dimmer. William and Mary walk past on their way to the sand dune next to the ‘Red Moon Motel’ sign. The Dust Witch watches in horror with the rest of the audience as Mary is murdered. Mary evaporates and William staggers away. The Dust Witch collapses and claws at the sand. The Dust Witch and Mr Stanford are opposing forces. At the end of the night their two worlds collide as William and Wendy pull their lovers from the pools - the drowned man and woman. Mr Stanford sees that his work is complete and the Dust Witch has failed to protect them. Final Show Trivia The Dust Witch is a character from the novel ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ by Ray Bradbury. In the novel, she’s part of a travelling supernatural carnival. She’s described as, ‘A crumbled statue with blind-newt lashes sewn tight with black-widow thread. She was blind, but special blind. She could dip down her hands to feel the bumps of the world.’ She can access people’s souls and slow their heartbeats She has a copy of William’s postcard in a bell-shaped birdcage of rusted iron, nestled in a small pile of sand. Mr Stanford has another copy of the postcard in a glass bell jar on a pedestal in the Basement. The stamp on the postcard has an image of Senator Brien McMahon. In her shack, dozens of scarlet strings hang in a line along a fence. There are similar strands in the Basement, in a small room next to The Assistant’s Office. Possibly, they represent lifelines and the linear journey of the human soul. In Greek mythology, the ‘Moirai’ – Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos – controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal being. The Dust Witch gives an picture of ‘Maman Brigitte’ to an audience member. Maman Brigitte is a voodoo spirit, or ‘Ioa’ - a great and powerful force. She drinks rum infused with hot peppers and is symbolized by a black rooster. She uses obscenities and protects gravestones in cemeteries if they are properly marked with a cross. At the side of one of the sand dunes is a low opening to a tunnel that leads to a secret potion room. In amongst the jars and spells is a moonshine distillery. Parts of the desert look like they’ve been evacuated for nuclear testing. This theme crops up elsewhere around the building – there are pictures of mushroom clouds both in William and Mary’s house and Wendy and Marshall’s trailer. There are newspaper articles about nuclear bombs in the Motel Reception. The show takes place on 30th October 1962, shortly after the twelve days between the 16th and 28th of October 1962, which mark the most dangerous period of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the Drafting Room, the file on The Dust Witch is labelled ‘The Widow’. It suggests that she’s preparing for a funeral ‘in perpetuity’. The pages are mostly blank, but a page near the end entitled ’40 Days and 40 Nights’ describes how she rescues Dwayne from the wilderness and leads him back to civilization to cleanse him. Parts of the story told by the Dust Witch are repeated in various scenes by several characters in the show. The lines are taken from bedtime tales told by Marie and The Grandmother in the original ‘Woyzeck’. The tale told by The Grandmother is perhaps the most haunting passage in the entire play. She tells the story to a group of girls and her idea of a fairytale is the most despondent and bleak tragedy one could imagine – ‘Once upon a time there was a poor little boy who had no father or mother. Everything was dead, and there was nobody left in the whole wide world. Everything was dead, and he went away and searched day and night. And because there was nobody left he thought he’d go up to heaven. And the moon looked at him so kindly! But when he reached it, he found it was a piece of rotten wood. And then he went to the sun and found it was a withered sunflower. And he wanted to go back to earth, but the earth was an upturned pot. And he was all alone. And he sat down and cried, and he’s sitting there still, all alone’. The Sandman is also referenced when Marie sings to her baby to get it off to sleep, ‘Here comes The Sandman, walking across the wall. Keep your eyes closed! If he looks in them you’ll go blind.’ The Sandman is a mythical character in Northern European folklore who brings good dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto the eyes of children while they sleep at night. The German writer, ETA Hoffmann (1776–1822) wrote an inverse depiction of the lovable character in a story called ‘Der Sandmann’, that showed how sinister such a character could be made. According to the protagonist's nurse, he threw sand in the eyes of children who wouldn't sleep, with the result of those eyes falling out and being collected by The Sandman, who then takes the eyes to his iron nest on the Moon, and uses them to feed his children. The tale told by The Dust Witch also brings to mind a Ray Bradbury short story from 1954, ‘All Summer in a Day’. The story is about a class of school children on Venus, who live in a world of constant rainstorms, where the sun is only visible for one hour every seven years. One of the children, Margot, used to live on Earth and is the only one to have seen sunshine. She describes the sun as ‘a penny’ and ‘like a fire in the stove’, but the other children refuse to believe her. She’s bullied and locked in a closet. As the sun is about to appear, their teacher takes the class outside to enjoy their only hour of sunshine and, in the excitement, they forget all about Margot. Suddenly, it starts to rain and the children run back inside. One of the children remembers Margot who’s still locked in the closet and, ashamed, they let her out. The precious sun has come and gone and Margot, who loved the sun the most, has missed it. Quotes References Christopher HongCategory:Characters